


introduction: cup o noodles

by peachiceteass



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bisexual Natasha Romanov, Budding Romance, M/M, Some Fluff, Steve is an art student, but not at all, obviously, think animal house
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-15 13:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9236456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachiceteass/pseuds/peachiceteass
Summary: Steve is navigating through his sophomore year in college pretty well--he's the top student in the arts program, his roommate is his best friend, and he's even finally made a friend out of local nuisance Tony Stark--but it only takes one stupid crush to bring that tumbling down. Raise a glass to the ever-changing enigma of college.





	1. part I: gimme a hand, man

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my first ever story on ao3! i'm hoping to get some feedback because i really don't have any idea what works and what doesn't. i'm working on the third chapter right now, so i'm wondering if i should update every weekend or halfway through the week or something like that. let me know what you think! enjoy!

“So, what do you want me to do?” Natasha drawled, not looking up from her laptop. She was a highly-motivated linguistics major with a habit of keeping to herself. Her prowess at both social and technological efforts, however, encouraged her fellow classmates to engage in usually-unwanted attention. Whenever someone needed the due date for a paper to be extended slightly, they went to Natasha for guidance—in other words, to crash the website maintained by their professors.

Across the table from her sat her best friend Steve, a somewhat shy, highly opinionated art student who was best known for leading protests and working at the Health and Wellness center as a rep for mental illness. Steve was an exception to Natasha’s tendency toward solitude. He leaned forward, the dog tags around his neck gently brushing Natasha’s computer. “You have to help me with this, Nat,” he said urgently, a faint red spreading across his cheeks. “You know I’m not good with…”

“Boys?” she finished with a smirk.

He glowered at her. “Yes. Are you gonna help me?”

She finally looked up to respond, “What exactly do you need help with? I don’t understand what the problem is.”

“We just addressed what the problem is: I can’t talk to boys,” Steve complained, resting his head on the cold wooden desk. His blonde hair, slightly puffy from the humidity, was pushed up and away. It stuck up rather dramatically, in Natasha’s opinion.

“How am I supposed to help with that?” she continued, moving on from the hair problem. “Besides, it’s just not true. You’re the most charismatic person I’ve ever met. You’d make a great politician.”

He made a retching sound. “Say that to me again and I’ll kill myself.”

“Okay, anyways, Mr. President,” Natasha continued over his objections, “you can talk to boys. You always talk to boys. You’re an insufferable flirt, actually. You just can’t talk to _this_ boy.” She typed frantically for a few seconds. Steve sat silently, stumped by this. Natasha mumbled, “Did they try to download two spywares at the same time? What the hell?”

“I am not a flirt,” Steve responded after a good ten second silence.

“You absolutely are,” Natasha maintained, looking at him over the top of her glasses. “Remember when we went to LA for spring break, and I came back to our hotel room, and I swear to god I had been gone for like 15 minutes, and when I got back, you were busy seducing the fucking Uber driver?”

“He was cute, and willing,” Steve mumbled, refusing to be embarrassed (although his cheeks said otherwise). “That was different. One night stands don’t count.”

“So it’s more than lust?” Natasha inquired, grinning. She had him exactly where she wanted him.

“Yes, obviously,” Steve said. “Why did you think I came to you to figure out how to fuck someone? I can hold my own, Nat.”

She was stumped. Steve Rogers was, above all, a no-strings-attached kind of guy. He got all his emotional support from…well, her, and some other close friends, but mostly her. “Who is this guy?”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I have no idea who this person is.”

Steve sighed. “There’s the misunderstanding. I couldn’t figure out why you were trying to dissect me.”

“Oh. Well, you’re acting weird,” she said with a shrug. Her computer suddenly started beeping at her. “Oh, for gods’ sake, it’s Java, you piece of shit!”

“Hey, remind me why you’re not an IT major.”

“They don’t offer it here. It’s a liberal arts school, Steve,” Natasha reminded him.

“Right, of course. Where Oscar Wilde would’ve gone to die,” he reminisced with a smile.

“He actually died in a hotel,” Natasha pointed out.

“I know, I know.”

“Anyways,” Natasha prompted.

“Right,” Steve mumbled, slumping over in his chair again. “You know that guy in my gender studies class who I accidentally dumped an entire coffee on?”

“Gender studies? So, he’s gay?” Natasha said innocently.

“Haha. Yes, he’s gay,” Steve deadpanned. “Do you know who I’m talking about?”

“Barnes, right? Bucky Barnes?” Natasha asked, taking a sip of her own coffee.

Steve said nothing, just stared miserably out the window.

“No,” Natasha gasped.

“Yes,” Steve moaned, burying his head in his hands. “What am I gonna do? Walk up to him after class and say, ‘Hey wanna get coffee? Like the scalding hot kind I dumped on your head that one time?’”

“I still can’t believe you dumped coffee on a guy with one arm,” Natasha said, shaking her head.

“Oh my god, thanks for reminding me,” Steve said, sounding somehow even more miserable. “One time, I leaned forward to ask him for help on one of our comprehension questions, and I swear to god I said, ‘Hey, can you give me a hand?’”

“No!” Natasha gasped, hiding her laugh behind her hands.

“Yes! And you know what he said?”

“Oh my god, no,” Natasha laughed, horrified.

“He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘I only have one.’ I thought I was gonna die.”

“No! Oh, god, Steve, you are so fucked,” Natasha laughed.

“I know,” he sighed. “What am I gonna do?”

“Well,” Natasha started, but before she could finish, a short, handsome, Italian boy walked up to their table and sat down, closing Natasha’s laptop in order to properly make an entrance.

“Hey, losers,” he said casually.

“What do you want, Tony?” Natasha sighed, opening her laptop back up. Tony was a bit of a nuisance. He was famously rich—the orphan of Howard Stark lived comfortably—and for some reason had gotten about 2 million dollars’ worth of scholarships from almost every college in the country, and even some out of the country—except for this college. Everything he did was in that vein of reasoning: he dressed in old t-shirts and never really combed his hair, but he still wore expensive leather jackets and drove literally any car he wanted. His goal in life was to make it appear he didn’t care, while simultaneously caring very deeply. Steve would never tell anyone this, but Tony was a regular at the Wellness Center because of a well-publicized hostage situation a few years earlier. It was also the reason for the arc reactor that glowed through his shirt.

“Nothing,” he said, grabbing Natasha’s coffee and attempting to drink some. She snatched it out of his hand. “Hey, man, share!”

“Get your own, Stark,” she snarled. There was some tension between the two of them, to say the least. Natasha was extremely protective of Steve, and there had been some kind of feud between Tony and Steve some years ago.

“What’s up, Tony?” Steve said, glad to have a distraction.

“I’m just bored, and I thought I saw Natasha taking the piss out of you from through the window, so I thought I’d join,” Tony remarked, leaning his chair back. “Are you talking about Clint?”

Natasha tensed. “No, why do you ask?”

“Well, because he’s in the fucking hospital,” Tony said, “and you look super tense.”

Steve shrugged. “She always looks like that.”

Natasha glared at Steve. “Very funny. Anyways, Tony, if we wanted you to tell us all about poor little Bird-Boy with his stupid clipped wing, we’d ask.”

“Nat, leave him alone,” Steve sighed. He turned back to Tony. “How is he?”

“Eh, here and there,” Tony shrugged. “He wants you to visit, you know.”

“He’s made that very clear,” Natasha said through gritted teeth, stabbing a few keys on her computer.

“We can pay him a visit tonight, I’m sure,” Steve said, patting her hand. She snatched her hand away without looking up.

“Okay, whatever,” Tony said, going for the coffee again. He was unsuccessful. “Me and Bruce were gonna go see him after the art exhibition thing tonight.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were coming,” Steve said, reaching for Natasha’s coffee just to subtly brag.

“Yeah, of course we are,” Tony said, pretending to ignore it. “I just wanted to stop by before Econ. That class makes me wanna kill myself.” He leapt to his feet, saluted Steve dramatically, and winked at Natasha. “See you guys at the exhibition?”

“See ya, Tony,” Steve said, waving him off. He sighed, raising his eyebrows at Natasha. “What are we gonna do with him?”

Natasha laughed. “You make it sound like he’s our son.”

Steve shrugged. “He kind of is.”


	2. part II: a new hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a failed art presentation has unexpected results.

Dressed in a satiny green dress and her hair pulled messily up to a bun tied at the nape of her neck, Natasha waltzed up to the section of wall dedicated to Steve’s various works. “Not going for a specific theme this time?”

Steve wore a white-and-blue-checkered collared shirt with the sleeves pushed up. He had been craning his neck in the opposite direction, adjusting his thin tie, when he heard her. “What?” He whipped his head around, smacking the wall with his free hand. “Ow. No, there’s definitely a theme.” He pushed his glasses forward on his nose, feeling like a typical Silicon Valley hipster.

Natasha tilted her head over. “I don’t get it. None of these look the same at all.”

Steve chuckled. “Oh, Nat.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

“I’m not! It’s just—don’t mistake difference in medium with difference in theme,” Steve said cryptically.

“What the hell does that mean?”

He glanced at the wall, bewildered. “You don’t see it?”

She shook her head. “I definitely don’t. You know, it’s bad form to talk to the lower-minded plebeians so condescendingly.”

He rolled his head back, laughed once, and then faced her. The look on his face as he considered his work was one of pride and wonder. “Well, you see these charcoal ones? They’re all depicting kind of, I don’t know, just basically comfort? It’s hard to explain without sounding like a douche, to be honest,” he said with a laugh.

“Then don’t explain,” Natasha said with a little smile as he admired his work. “I don’t have an artist’s brain. I don’t think like you do.”

Steve smiled to himself as he gazed up and down the wall. “Notice any familiar pictures?”

“Well, that one’s me after the Front Bottoms show,” she said, pointing to one of the most colorful pieces on the wall. “I look good in oil paints.”

“You look good in everything, Nat,” Steve scoffed.

“You’re so right.” The two shared a grin and Steve pulled Natasha into a side hug.

“Hey, it’s Picasso!” Tony shouted as he arrived with Bruce and Rhodes. Steve and Natasha didn’t really know Rhodes that well, but he was usually nice and extremely polite. Bruce, on the other hand, they knew very well. Steve deftly glanced at Natasha with triumph on his face, which she returned with a subtle glower.

“Didn’t think you’d make it,” Steve greeted.

“I told you we were coming, dude,” Tony reminded him.

“Oh, yeah, no, I know that, I just didn’t believe you,” Steve elaborated with a grin. “Nice to see you again, Bruce.” Whoops! Had he just accidentally reminded the entire group of the failed romance between Bruce and Natasha? Judging by Tony’s elated smile, Steve assumed that he had.

Bruce was a little strange, in Steve’s opinion. He was a bit of a loner with a knack for leaving people on read. (This was slightly annoying but permissible to Steve, but it aggravated Natasha to no end. There were countless times Steve had been woken up in the middle of the night so he could help her try and figure out what Bruce meant.) Personally, Steve didn’t understand Natasha’s attraction to Bruce. He seemed a little unhinged at times, and had an extremely bad temper. He was a biochemistry major, or maybe some kind of engineer? To be honest, Steve wasn’t sure.

While contemplating this, he noticed his professor trying to get his attention out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, looks like I’m up,” he said with a nervous smile, adjusting his collar as he prepared to go up. He started walking toward the raised stage, but Natasha grabbed his sleeve as Tony called out, “Hey, don’t forget your finger paints!”

Steve turned with a sheepish grin to gently carry his three paintings, leaving the sketches and charcoals for Tony and Bruce to guard. As he approached the stage, his professor tapped the mic to silence the room. She smiled at Steve, who felt like maybe he would die right then, and then leaned into the mic and started introducing the event.

While she was busily thanking everyone involved, Steve took the opportunity to look out at the crowd. Not too sizeable, but big enough that he didn’t know everyone’s name. A friend from his humanities class, Wanda, had arrived with another friend of theirs, Scott. There were really no other notable people in the crowd. Glancing toward the door, Steve noticed Sam and Bucky just walking in—and he stopped thinking for a second. Bucky was here? Why would he be here? He had no arts classes this semester. Someone had to have invited…Steve turned sharply to look at Natasha and Tony, who were also looking at Bucky.

“First to present tonight is one of our top students in the arts college. He’s here today with a series of high-contrast oil paintings titled “Summer.” This is the second addition in his season-based theme. Please give a round of applause to Steve Rogers!”

Holy shit. Steve glanced for a second at Natasha, then turned and smiled at the audience. Bucky was there, clapping, looking at Steve. Holy shit.

Natasha hurried onto the stage to assist Steve in his setup. With their backs to the audience, Steve murmured, “You little shits.”

Natasha was plugging in a projector as she replied, “You’ll thank us later.”

“Doubt it!” Steve hissed. Natasha stood up straight, smiled, and curtsied to the audience. There were a few laughs as Steve returned her smile bitterly.

“Hi!” he greeted pleasantly, swallowing awkwardly as he glanced toward the door ( _don’t look at me holy shit don’t look at me HE FUCKING LOOKED AT ME)._ “As Dr. Elise said, my name is Steve Rogers, and I…” he trailed of for a second, lost, “…am an art student here!” He chuckled nervously with the audience.

Natasha gave him a double thumbs-up while Tony recorded Steve’s failing presentation. Sam nodded reassuringly while Bucky just stood there, looking _fucking incredible_ in an unfairly tight red t-shirt.

Steve cleared his throat and looked anywhere else, resting his eyes on Wanda. Relief flooded through his veins. Wanda was so nice and comforting. Sometimes he felt like she could read his mind.

“As you already heard, I’ve been working on this theme based on the seasons,” Steve said, changing the slide to a picture of his previous series. “My original idea came from the nerves of attending a school where I knew…well, nobody,” he chuckled. “I drew, and painted, because it was the only familiar thing to me last fall. It was mostly retrospective, and I focused on subjects here that reminded me of home.”

He paused, looking over to the knot where Natasha and Tony had now joined Wanda (while Bruce and Scott awkwardly tried not to look at each other). Feeling a surge of confidence, he stood up straighter and changed the slide.

The next three or four slides went smoothly as he discussed color scheme, artists that he had worked from, and composition. It was halfway through discussing inspiration that he started to lose steam.

He was regarding the first of the three paintings, a portrait-sided, brightly colored one of his closest friends at a local ice-cream parlor, huddled laughing around a table, sharing three of the messiest sundaes Steve had ever seen anyone eat.

“This one,” he said, faltering a little, “is still untitled. It’s hard to define, I guess. But I chose this subject because, in a way, it was one of the moments that I transitioned from the _Autumn_ mindset to the _Summer_ mindset.” He glanced in the direction of Bucky, who was clearly paying close attention, staring intensely at the projected slideshow. God, he was so beautiful. His jawline and cheekbones jutted out enough to look absolutely godlike—the hints of stubble across his chin, the loose strand of hair that framed his face—he was effortlessly a work of art that put these measly paintings to shame. Steve worked for hours to produce anything half as purely, readily beautiful. He caught Bucky’s eye for a second, breaking the stare only after Bucky’s features relaxed into a playful grin.

Steve focused back on his presentation, cheeks flaming, and cleared his throat. “Uh, so the difference in style with this in comparison to the _Autumn_ pieces is mostly…”

And so on, continuing fluidly for about twenty minutes. When there were about two or three minutes left in his presentation, he said, “Alright, we have a few minutes left, so I’m willing to take any questions.” A girl with a pink Afro raised her hand.

“I was wondering what you’re trying to get out of this project. What are you hoping to achieve?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Well,” Steve said, looking at the pink-haired girl, “Overall I’m hoping to see my growth as an artist and a student, but ideally I would be able to reflect on the changes I’ve made over these four years.” He paused, glancing at the projected slide of his artwork. “Long-lasting friendships,” he said, smiling at Natasha, but he purposely shifted his gaze to look at Bucky as he finished, “as well as”—he took a breath— “new relationships.”

This time it was Bucky who blushed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know I said I was posting on Friday, but I went to the movies instead. I mean, come on, I had free tickets to La La Land (for the second time). Anyways, I promise I'll try to be more strict about post-dates. Thanks to everyone who left kudos and comments! Feel free to add criticism or even just ideas about the story--anything will help!


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